Thang Nguyen 555

Cultures on Collision Course

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With some short-term relief work in Asia/Africa and long stint in Telecom, Thang also earned a B.A. at Pennsylvania State University. M.A. in Communication at Wheaton Graduate School, M.A. in Cross-Cultural Communication at Gordon-Conwell Seminary, Boston. In addition, he earned a CELTA – classes taken in Hanoi for cultural re-immersion.

Tag: United States

  • Sunday afternoon

    If it weren’t for the rain, I wouldn’t have remembered the incident. Being just a kid, I was home-bound by torrential rain. No matter how hard I tried, the adults in the house would not let me go out and play. My tantrum perhaps lasted for hours with ending compromise: I got taken to see…

  • Wake me when October ends

    Limits to power. Limits to growth. Speed limits. We finally see ourselves in the mirror. Dying, decaying, decomposing. Long live Blue Jeans, T-shirt and Rock “n” Roll. 60 Minutes capitalized on their archive footage to show us the evolution of John Kerry. Our evolution, from idealism to realism. The aging process that takes a toll…

  • Softer side of Soft Power

    In the end of A Christmas Holiday, our Somerset Maugham‘s character went back to his middle-class comfort zone but quite aware of his “plastic” existence. This was right after he had spent a week in Paris, meeting Lydia, a Russian gypsy whose suffering life was nothing Charlie had ever imagined. I couldn’t help think of…

  • To beat a dead horse

    Even to this day, people still using the Vietnam War as a figure of speech: “Syria will be another US‘ Vietnam” etc… It was meant to be the new Boogeyman. To scare off the children. To conjure bad imagery and bring back nightmares. In Rambo, Stallone’s rare line was “where they call Hell, I call…

  • War’s reluctant start

    It’s true a century ago with the assassination of an Austrian baron. It’s true half a century ago with one ( or two) incidents in the Gulf of Tonkin. It’s true this very Labor weekend, even when we all saw photos of little bodies – dead by chemically induced weapon. Labor Day traditionally meant as…

  • Chemistry: blessing and curse

    Bodies of little ones lined up on the floor (Syria). Little orphans waiting to be fed and sustained (Vietnam – Agent Orange victims) decades after the War was over. Nagasaki and Hiroshima, if we can still recall those localities. Wrong use of chemistry. Shadow effects. Masquerading rhetoric. Just as the Dow finally hit its height.…

  • Dilemma called Life

    30+ Chinese women start protesting the label of “unwanted” goods. Tunisian Topless Jihad set a World Religion on fire. Men teetering on retirement seeking work and love in the wrong place. A friend in search of affordable physical therapy and health care coverage. Dilemma called Life. If it’s easy and smooth, it wouldn’t be called…

  • We can handle the truth

    We here are people who fled Vietnam in various waves (pre-1975, 1975, and post-1975) and have settled in Little Saigon, Orange County, CA. I have seen the strip transformed, from a few stores to be what it is today: patch work of mini plazas interlacing with mobile home parks, often times, reflections of the boom and…

  • Self-appreciation

    Bachelor Party. Spring Break. Girls’ Night Out. Spousal date…and the list goes on. One of the things foreigners found fascinating about America is its sense of enjoyment (and sometimes entitlement). We’re gonna party, Winter Spring Summer or Fall. Time for yourself. Look at yourself in the mirror, just to acknowledge the reflection that is there.…

  • Turning Tragedy into Triumph

    It’s on the Post. It’s on Linkedin. It’s in your face. It’s about tourism to America. Or the decline of. You would think people love to flock to the big Apple, to Disneyland and to Las Vegas. But lately, it doesn’t happen (tourists prefer destinations like Turkey over the USA). To top that, we got bad…